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| MACABRE DUO: Christopher Walken (left) and Sam Rockwell in 'A Behanding in Spokane.' Photo: Joan Marcus |
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Theater Review
Christopher Walken is superb, but McDonagh's
plot wears thin in A Behanding in Spokane
A Behading in Spokane
Written by Martin McDonagh
Directed by John Crowley
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), www.abehandinginspokane.com
Closes June 6, 2010
Click Here to Download the Review
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By Scott Harrah
A Behanding in Spokane may be the first
American-set play by renowned Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, but it is
also one of his most flawed. The premise—a man (Christopher Walken) searches
for his missing hand while dealing with two con artists (Anthony Mackie and Zoe
Kazan) and a high-strung hotel clerk (Sam Rockwell)—is full of McDonagh’s
trademark black humor, but the show is ultimately disappointing, with a
threadbare narrative, plot twists that make little sense, and a storyline that
simply goes nowhere.
Walken, as lead character Carmichael, is marvelously
creepy. Walken has the eccentricities of his character down well, from his
nervous mannerisms to his bizarre quest to find a hand severed from his body 47
years ago. As he stands in a disheveled, fleabag hotel room, he’s natural and
completely believable, but Walken’s outstanding performance alone cannot keep
the show from collapsing through its many plot holes.
Mackie and Kazan
play Toby and Marilyn, two scammers that try to sell Carmichael a supposedly
mummified version of his severed hand. It’s difficult to pinpoint just exactly
what McDonagh has in mind with such macabre material, but it doesn’t work as
either a farce or a dark comedy. Many elements of the show seem to have been
thrown in for mere shock value, such as Carmichael’s racist predilection for
bandying about the “n” word whenever discussing
African-Americans.
Without giving too much of the story away—not that
there’s much here to begin with—many scenes defy logic. We are supposed to
believe that, when shackled to pipes while standing near an open window, Toby
and Marilyn are left defenseless as a candle burns inside a gasoline can.
Couldn’t the two charlatans simply break the window and yell for
help?
Kazan is too strident for the role of lady grifter Marilyn. She
shrieks and screeches out lines of dialogue, and Mackie is equally inept. Both
are like cartoon caricatures of bad guys. This could either be blamed on
miscasting or John Crowley’s direction, but it doesn’t really
matter.
Only Sam Rockwell, as hotel clerk Mervyn, is able to match
Walken’s first-rate level of hilariously overstated folly. He’s riveting while
delivering a monologue about monkeys, but unfortunately it’s not enough to
overshadow the uneven performances of Kazan and Mackie, and the dull denouement
of McDonagh’s half-baked story.
It’s truly a pity that McDonagh, who’s
brought us such theatrical masterpieces as The Beauty Queen of
Leenane, The Pillowman, and The Lieutenant of Inishmore, wrote
such a middling work for his first play set on American soil. Perhaps his
absurdist Irish sensibilities—so powerful in the aforementioned shows— simply
cannot work in an American setting. However, a shoddily constructed play like
this would have little onstage fireworks regardless of geography.
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